His brother gazed blankly at him, apparently not understanding. "Deely?" he said. "_I_ didn't take her. What d' you mean. Where is she?" "Coward!" cried Dennis, growing violent. At that word Sylv quivered visibly, and drew himself up, with a pride he had not shown before. Dennis, after pausing, went on: "D'ye dar' to tell me ye don't know what I mean? Deely's home, but I've been a-talkin' with her, and I know it's so and ain't no other way. She sees how you been a-playin' it on me, but 'tain't no 'count to her. She wants you to go right on, the same way. 'Tain't nothin' to her that you hold us off from bein' married, by that foolishness and studyin' o' yourn. It's cl'ar as day she thinks a heap more on you than she does on me. An' I tell ye ye're the one that's to blame. Ye done it, and ye knowed it. Ye took her heart away from me." A new perception broke upon Sylv. He contemplated Dennis with a sort of curiosity, and a smile stirred the loose dark beard about his lips. Any one but his angry brother might have seen that he regarded the idea of his being enamored of a woman with a disdain curbed only by a sense of the comic. "So you stand up here and tell me that, do you?" he retorted. "Well, all I've got to say, Dennie, is that you're acting like a fool." Dennis's hand clutched the stock of the gun, nervously, under the strain of the effort he made to control himself. "No, I ain't," he declared. "I been a fool afore, but I ain't one now. I see the whole thing, I tell ye. She's set her heart on you, and you've set yourn on her." Sylv braced himself a little, and looked resolute. "Now I give you fair warning," he said. "I tell you square that I don't care about Adela Reefe more than as a sister--my sister and your wife that is to be. Are you going to deny my word?" "Yes, I am," the other asserted, doggedly. "And you're going on, after that, to assert that I took her love away from you?" "Yes, I am." "Then I say, _you lie_!" Sylv returned, hotly. The same passionateness that ruled Dennis was present in him, also, though well concealed under his habitual calm; but it had broken loose now. In an instant Dennis lifted his gun to an aim. "No man can say that to me," he thundered. His finger slid down to the trigger, and he drew the hammer back. Sylv stood in the road, unmoved, the books under his arms. "It's too easy a shot," he said, quickly, but in a low voice. "Besides, I can't fire back." "You won't have any call for that," Dennis assured him, grimly. He spoke coolly, but his rage completely mastered him. "Stop!" cried Sylv, when the gun-mouth seemed about to burst into flame. "Stop!" The syllable was repeated from the woods close by them. Was it an echo? No; that was impossible; there was no echo in that place, and both men knew it. Besides, there was a different tone in the voice which seemed to ring out from the shadow of the pines--an accent of alarm and agony, unlike the peremptory cry which Sylv had uttered.